


Stray

by Joel7th



Series: Stray [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Crack Pairing, Humor, M/M, Oscar is one of The Swedes, Post-Season 2, Pre-Slash, Rare Pairings, Spoilers for Season 2, The Swedes - Freeform, he's the youngest Swede (that got blown up), mention of Ben Hargreeves, mention of The Sparrow Academy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:20:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25796551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joel7th/pseuds/Joel7th
Summary: People picked up a stray dog or a stray cat. Klaus picked up a stray ghost.One with a big gun.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves/Oscar (The Umbrella Academy)
Series: Stray [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1891927
Comments: 43
Kudos: 306





	Stray

It felt weird to walk the ground of Dallas again. To feel distinctly the Texan heat on his exposed skin (and worry about getting burnt — forgot the sunscreen again!). To hear the crunching of gravel beneath his soles as he strode down a random deserted Dallas alleyway. To breathe in the air where the acrid stench of exhaust fumes hung heavily (he supposed it was the same in every city now). To smile wanly and wave back at a handful cowboys waving at him on the back of their ghost horses (he was stunned that they remembered him). It felt just like yesterday and in a sense, it was, except yesterday was also six decades ago, long enough to be a lifetime.

The thing about time travel was, as Five had told them oh-so many times, that time was fickle and the butterfly effect was as real as the odds of Klaus getting cirrhosis by 60; a slightest change in the past could result in a whole different universe in the future. And what they had done in the 60s was not so much a butterfly as a fucking Argentinosaurus.

Klaus gave himself two thumbs up for coming up with that analogy.

A quick rundown of the pros and cons of their current situation. One, they had been flung into a completely different future than the one they’d left behind, _a whole new world_ in a not-so-Disney sense, one that they knew shit about, so, massive cons. Two, dear old Daddy was breathing and not six feet under, which was not a mere drawback but their worst nightmare. The one persistent phantom Klaus could never banish no matter how sober he was and how hard he tried. The only silver lining was that Reggie had chosen to not adopt them, having witnessed firsthand what a scared, little mess they’d become, and so they could safely discard the pesky attachment to their name, which gave them a chance to re-define themselves without the Hargreeves’ crushing weight on their back. The trauma that went hand-in-hand with this two-syllable name sadly remained, but Klaus took solace in small victories. The Umbrella Academy had been replaced by the Sparrow Academy, which was an improvement since ‘Umbrella’ sounded stupid and having a sparrow, a quick, light bird, for a tattoo definitely beat an umbrella. Less thrilled, though, was the fact that they were now homeless and penniless, with only the clothes on their back. They’d pull through, Klaus supposed, having gone through the same predicament when they first arrived at the 60s (this time without a cult, he promised himself). Knowing that their doppelgängers in this timeline had died shortly after birth (which suspiciously reeked of Reggie’s particular brand of cruelty) should not have been a relief but Klaus for once appreciated not having their existence negated due to temporal conflict. Pros, absolutely. Ben being alive and kicking (and rocking his Toby Maguire’s emo fringe) would have been the ultimate pros of this alternate timeline if he were slightly less of a colossal dick (pun not intended). The OG Ben had been a dick, too, but a sensible one at the end of the day. This AU Ben just… As Klaus recalled their ‘warm’ meet-cute, his hand unconsciously went to his neck, where Spider-Ben had left his homecoming souvenir. Klaus wasn’t a fan of scarves but he might start considering their addition to his wardrobe just so people wouldn’t see his freshly minted scar and assume he had been desperate enough to pick the rope at some point. He was desperate but not _that_ desperate, thank you.

So, back to Dallas again, where they had called home for the last several years, and, ironically, the only place on Earth that brought them some semblance of a ‘home’ at the moment. Habits led Klaus to his old mansion, once a house to so many memories, pleasant and otherwise, with his cult. The place was in a severely derelict state, a toothless, dying beast looming over an empty piece of land stuck in construction limbo. There he met Keechie again, now too old to stand without his walker but not too senile to entirely forget his once revered Prophet and His last nugget of wisdom (Backstreet Boys’ lyrics — damn it, Ben). Keechie had been guarding the keys to this place and in a surge of emotions, he went down on shaky knees and held the metal pieces aloft his head. Klaus nearly snatched them out of his wrinkled hands, feeling uncomfortably conscious thanks to five pairs of eyes gawking at him in a range of emotions: from amusement to disbelief and impatience and outright annoyance.

“Don’t we all love a big, luxurious pool?” Allison said as her eyes skimmed the pool-shaped horror. The water was basically mud, and on the surface floated a daunting number of animal carcasses in varying states of decomposition. Vanya immediately retched, and Klaus could only pat her back in hope her nausea would pass and they wouldn’t christen their new home with vomit.

So, they had spent a week return the mansion to livable condition and by the end of it, Allison had thrown her broom down and cursed in seven languages her inability to rumor the place to clean up after itself. So, one by one they had found a job in town and settled into some sort of routine. It had taken a lot of (peaceful) negotiations and some (familial) fights (that might or might not involve super powers) but they had roughly agreed on the chores around the house: who cooked, who washed the dishes, who vacuumed the rooms, who took out the trash, who kept the pool clean et cetera. The pool was a touchy subject of debate but Allison wanted it and Klaus loved lying on a float, nursing a martini in hand, and Vanya yearned to get a tan one of those lazy weekends and so in the end, they had reached an agreement to keep and maintain it.

Because they had established a routine, Klaus wasn’t much surprised to get home at ten thirty in the evening to find Diego and Allison waiting for him in the kitchen, aka the self-proclaimed ‘Klaus Watching Squad’. While he did appreciate the concern, he also found it ludicrous. How old was he? Five? Had they imposed a curfew unbeknownst to him?

“Hey,” he greeted, waving a hand at them in an attempt to disperse some frustration exuding from their frames like sweat stench on a summer day, “I know we’ve agreed to have dinner together at least three times a week and today was dinner day but I got a little carried away and I’m so sorry I didn’t call you guys.” He clasped his hands in front of his chest in mock praying. “If only we had something like a portable phone that we could carry anywhere. That’d make life much easier for all of us.”

“You done babbling?” Diego sprang to his feet, circling Klaus and… sniffing him.

Klaus let out an exasperated sigh. This excessive amount of mother-henning was beginning to feel suffocating. “I didn’t go drinking so stop the police dog you’re doing. It’s ~embaaarraaassing.”

Diego reluctantly pulled away, looking slightly flushed under the fluorescent light. “You smell like bacon grease and waffle and instant coffee.”

“Excellent boy,” Klaus said with a whistle, just to ruffle Diego’s feathers. It was never not funny.

“Where have you been?” Allison asked before Diego started throwing hands.

“A diner, duh. I made a new friend and we went to a diner for some greasy treats that may shorten our lives a tad. Well, my life, actually, as he can’t eat and can only experience it vicariously.”

“The hell does that mean?”

“Guys, I’d like you to meet my brand-new buddy. Ta-da.”

Both Diego and Allison jumped from their seat with an undignified yelp when Klaus snapped his fingers and immediately a figure coated in blue light manifested. Klaus cackled at his siblings’ reaction; he found great joy in how people initially reacted when faced with a real spirit, especially those who boldly claimed ghosts didn’t exist and that they weren’t afraid. Diego had been one when they were both twelve.

Klaus would _love_ to see how Luther and Vanya and especially the fearless Five would fare in this ghostly business.

“Meet Oscar,” Klaus announced, throwing an arm around Oscar’s shoulder. “He’s quiet, he likes milk and—guys, what’s wrong?”

Klaus’s smile vaporized at the sight of Allison and Diego’s tense expression. Diego had even whipped out two knives (where the heck had he kept them?) and looked ready to puncture the ghost (impossible) and/or Klaus (possible) with them.

“What the fuck, Klaus?” It was Diego who exclaimed. “That was one of The Swedes!”

“One of the what?”

“The assassins sent to kill us,” Allison supplied. “You helped us dispose one in Ray’s house!”

“That one?” Klaus rolled his eyes. He turned to Oscar, trying to match his features with those of the unfortunate corpse in Allison’s living room. Sure there was some resemblance if he squinted his eyes really hard, like the bleach-blond hair and the cold, pale eyes. The shape of the nose too, but that was hard to tell when Klaus didn’t have the best memory; the only thing he remotely recalled was that Swede had been less cute than this one. “Really?” he asked the ghost, who gave the blankest expression possible on a human’s, or ghost’s, face as a reply. It seemed to be the young Swede’s default setting.

“He and his brothers attacked me at the mental asylum and later at Da—Reggie’s gala.”

“Woah, I suspected he was some quiet cowboy or farmer who died because he mistook a grenade for a squirrel or something. How could I have known he was one of those Swede guys? Odd, they never came for me. Why didn’t they come for me?”

“How dumb can you be? Look at that big, fat gun! Does that look like something to hunt rodents?”

“Ex-squeeze me! I may not possess all the brain cells in this household but I got this under control, OK? Otherwise he would have already carved a hole between your legs with the way you keep pointing your finger at his face.”

“I can—”

“Yeah, good luck trying to deflect ghost bullets, _Magneto_.”

“Boys,” Allison intervened before things escalated into a full-scale squabble. “Klaus, could you just… make him disappear or something? It’s unsettling to see a killer ghost in the middle of our kitchen.”

Klaus mouthed “Fine” and waved his ‘Goodbye’ as if to fan away some smoke. Oscar faded into thin air like he was never there in the first place.

“Did he go away?” Diego asked warily.

Klaus pulled out a chair and sat down, putting his bare feet on Diego’s laps. Diego grunted in frustration but indulged him, just like every other time. “Nah,” Klaus said, wriggling his toes. “He’s still there. You just don’t see him.”

“Like Ben?” Allison asked.

A pang of sadness like a hard gut-punch knocked the air from his lungs, stunning him. Oscar, being the first to notice the shift in him due to their spiritual link, raised his gun, but Klaus put a hand on the barrel and lowered it down. “Yeah, like Ben. He’d been there and I’d been talking to him and making faces at him the whole time but you guys just thought I was high or drunk.”

“Because you were always high and/or drunk,” Diego grouched.

Klaus pouted. “Hey, three solid years of sobriety before I fell off the wagon, OK? I feel that I deserved a badge.”

“Where did you find this Swedish nut job, Klaus?”

“The ‘Swedish nut job’,” Klaus said, air-quoting, “understands English well and he just pointed the gun at you, Diego.”

Diego flipped the bird at the empty space he assumed to be Oscar.

“This morning I succeeded in convincing a _babushka_ to evacuate an antique music box and sold it to a lovely gal,” Klaus began. “Took a bit of flirting on my part though. After that I decided to close the shop early and took a walk in the forest. Y’know, the ‘forest bathing’ the Japanese are crazy about.”

Both Allison and Diego shook their head in confusion.

“Anyway…”

When Klaus decided to give himself a forest bath, he didn’t imagine coming across a charred foot under a tree. A normal person would probably freak out and call 911, but Klaus was not normal by any standards (his siblings’ general consensus). Instead of screaming, he silently crouched down and poked the funny thing with a finger. Morbid curiosity, mostly. Soon as his finger came in contact with the burnt skin, he felt the softest electric current, barely a tickle, and saw tiny blue sparks at its tip. His heart jumped in excitement and a smile manifested on his lips. A dismembered foot would not produce such reactions, which meant this was not a mere foot but a ghost, or, what was left as a ghost after a person had died a gruesome death, explosion for example. Klaus had encountered a handful of cases during his years, and he knew these ‘ghosts’ had absolutely no chance of going into the light. No heaven, no hell, the spot where they’d died was the only place for them until the end of time…

… or when someone with Klaus’s abilities came and gave them a hand.

The old Klaus had never given them a hand because one, there had not been altruistic bone in him as Ben had so kindly remarked, and two, he had never been sober enough to pull off such a delicate, complex trick.

Restoring a soul was the hardest trick in the book, followed closely by destroying a soul, both of which Klaus had never tried. He’d hoped he would never have to.

Glancing around to make sure he was all alone, Klaus rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and rubbed his hands together as if trying to light a fire. In a sense he was, and it took no time for blue light to flare and cover his skin like tight leather gloves. “Here we go,” he said to no one in particular, hovering his palms above the ghost foot. Something crackled and the blue bled from his skin, slithering in the air like an acid-fueled scene before turning into needles to enter the hundreds pores on the foot. Klaus could see the effect in slow-motion and it brought him exhilaration the like of which he’d never experienced before. Better than the best drugs. He’d experimented with tinkering ghosts’ appearance before, with his only complete and also unconscious success being Ben; but to restore a full ghost like this case, it was his first. And boy, was the first always this exciting? Beads gathered at his temples, both from the heat and his exertion, but Klaus felt nothing but the ebb and flow of his energy as it worked in mystical way to knit together the rest of the foot’s owner, thread by exquisite thread. There was a snap, like the seamstress biting off the thread and then, looming over his crouched form was a young man with hair that caught the afternoon sunlight and brought strain to his eyes when he craned his neck to check out the restored face (he was a sucker for pretty faces, really).

Yeah, that was indeed a cute face, handsome and sprinkled with a few hints of green youth to sandpaper the too-sharp edges, and Klaus could appreciate it a whole lot better if his vision was not hindered by the muzzle of a gun.

The ghost was having a gun pointed at Klaus’s nose. The muzzle was so close to his nostrils that he could smell the oil and gunpowder, which almost triggered some memories he wished to bury.

“Maybe think twice about giving a makeover to a ghost next time, bro,” Diego helpfully suggested.

“What did you do?”

The latent concern in Allison’s question curled a warm tendril in Klaus’s guts. He smiled at her, flexing the fingers of his left hand. “My sexy lizard brain then reminded me that I indeed had the upper hand, pun very much intended, in this situation. I froze him, just in case you know, and told him, ‘While I love a long and hard _rifle_ waving in front of my face as much as the next person, I prefer it to be of organic matter instead of metal, so kindly put it down…”

Diego promptly choked on his spit while Allison tipped her head back and laughed so hard she appeared to be having a minor seizure.

“… or I’ll do us both a favor and undo my handiwork on you.’”

“C-Could you?” Diego sputtered.

“I haven’t found a poor unfortunate soul to test.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing, Allison. The guy was as mute as a silent movie.”

“Still wrapping his dead brain around the double entendre, probably,” Diego said.

There were times Klaus was grateful that his powers were ‘commune’ with rather than simply ‘talk’ to the dead; verbal language wasn’t the communicating vehicle in every circumstance, especially when he had to deal with ghosts who didn’t speak his languages, or didn’t speak at all. This was one such time.

Klaus suspected the cute ghost either had been born mute or had taken a Silent Vow when he was alive; whatever the case, he only stared at the medium with intense eyes that very subtly said he wanted to either fuck him or skin him, or both and not necessarily in that order.

Klaus groaned internally. Karma must have arrived to bite him in the ass for all the shits he’d done; why else the very first ghost to test his new powers happened to be a loon?

An eternity and a half later, the ghost finally lowered his gun and Klaus allowed himself to lower his guard. God, this level of concentration was so draining! He might need a drink.

“Alright,” Klaus said, holding up his palms in a gesture he hoped to convey peace, “you’re not going to shoot me, are you? Then we can talk.”

Looking somewhat confused, the ghost nodded. Then, as if he just realized something, he shook his head, near-white hair gleaming in the light. A few seconds later, he nodded again.

“OK, stop! No shoot me, then nod.”

The ghost nodded.

“Good boy,” Klaus muttered. The ghost looked at him with wide eyes. “My name’s Klaus.” He pointed to his chest. “What’s yours?”

The ghost shook his head slowly.

“Wait a minute,” Allison cut in, “he doesn’t remember his own name?”

Klaus shrugged, laying his head on Diego’s shoulder. “He was only a foot when I found him. Safe to say he’d gotten his _mind_ blown. The long years is certainly not helping his case.”

“Still remembers how to shoot,” Diego said. “Wait a minute, you just picked up an amnesiac trigger-happy ghost and took him home? What _is_ wrong with you?”

“Many things but I didn’t _just_ pick up a ghost. I pointed him to the light, told him to go there and enter Neverland or whatever. He glanced at the light, face expressionless, then turned away from it and started following me like a little duckling that I can’t chase away.”

“Just like a stray,” Allison commented, chuckling. “Kind of cute, really, if we leave out the gun and assassin thing. Since you couldn’t chase him away, you decided to make him your buddy instead?”

“I could have banished him,” Klaus corrected her. “But I really didn’t want to do that because theoretically it involves lots of painful screaming and screeching. Then something happened.”

Klaus wasn’t going to lie, the thought of banishing the guy had occurred to him more than once, especially when he turned around and a bleached head came into his view, along with the gun. God, how Klaus disliked guns!

“Are you going to follow me from now on?” Klaus barked, spinning around to face the ghost, who was shorter than him but stood with his back ramrod-straight, which more than compensated for his inferior height.

The ghost seemed to ponder his question before giving a firm nod.

Klaus rolled his eyes. “Look, whatever-your-name-is, I know because I patched you up, we’re somehow linked. I can feel it right now, and I’m sure you’re feeling it too. But you’re not chained to me, OK, you’re not indebted to me. Don’t think you have to tail along wherever I go as a form of indentured servitude — it’s the twenty-first century already. I used to have my brother handcuffed to me, and it’s not fair! It’s… just not fair.”

The thought of Ben brought an abrupt and shaky end to his rant. Hunching his shoulders, Klaus put a hand on a filthy wall of some darkened alleyway to support himself as tears swelled in his eyes. He wiped them with the back of his hand before they had a chance to fall. “Damn it, Ben,” he mumbled, lips trembling. “How dare you make me all teary-eyed in some shady alleyway you always warned me not to enter and I always did it because it was easiest to get my next fix there?”

The ghost looked confused like he had never seen a distressed person before and he wanted to help, he genuinely did, but he had no idea how. One hand left the gun (can’t put the gun down, can you?) and came to rest awkwardly on Klaus’s shoulder. His fingers curled and they began to treat Klaus’s sinews and bones like they were some sort of dough to knead. The ghostly pressure was foreign yet not entirely uncomfortable on his strained muscles. “How mortifying,” Klaus whispered with self-deprecating smile, “to have a mini-breakdown in front of a ghost. It’s all your fault, Be—”

The hand massaging his shoulder suddenly turned into a tight grip and Klaus was pulled forward faster than he could open his mouth for a yelp. A terrible, deafening sound followed seconds later, making Klaus’s head ring and pushing the memories of Vietnam to the surface. He gasped, immediately bringing his hands to cover his ears even though the damage had been done.

“What the hell?” Klaus barked, clenching his fist. The ghost’s impassive face started to ripple as soon as his hand glowed, and his frame went rigid. Making sure that the ghost wouldn’t pull another stunt like that, Klaus turned around and a stream of expletives poured from his mouth.

Klaus thought he’d never cussed so much in his life.

Diego and Allison widened their eyes at him in disbelief. “Your ghost shot a man at point blank?” Diego asked. “And you said you got him under control!”

“In my defense, the man was clutching a knife in his hand and without Oscar’s intervention, I’d have been the one on the ground. He must have thought I had some money on me; junkies are desperate like that.”

Allison glanced at the space behind Klaus’s back like she could see Oscar if she squinted a bit. “What did you do next?”

“I did what every sensible person would if their ghost blew someone’s head: I fled the crime scene.”

Klaus ran, simply ran, until he no longer could and his legs were ready to give out under him and his lungs were burning. He hadn’t had that much running for a while, more accustomed to strolling and light jogging in the early morning. In front of him was a nondescript diner and behind him stood the ghost who had been the reason for his over-exertion. His stomach rumbled and he was suddenly overwhelmed with a ravenous feeling. Utilizing his powers always had this side effect.

“I don’t know about you,” he told the ghost, pushing open the glass door, “but I’m starving.”

Klaus picked the furthest booth in a corner, where people’s eyes were least likely to wander and he could have what looked like a crazy one-sided conversation without other patrons throwing weird glances at him. In the past he had sat in such a spot many a late night, Ben opposite of him, his face shadowed by his hood, and his dead brother would watch him stuff his face with waffles like he hadn’t had anything to eat for a while (sometimes it was true). He would make occasional pauses mid-meal to ramble about random things or groan about how awful it felt post-high and Ben would nag at him — his brother had made it his unlife career — but no matter how bitter he sounded or how snide his remarks were, Klaus would pick his voice over the ghostly din conspiring to drive him mad any other day. It came with a downhearted realization that he was no longer privileged to it considering the ghost sitting opposite from him was no longer Ben.

“You want anything on the menu?” Klaus asked out of politeness. The waitress looked at him in mild confusion, thinking he was asking — and maybe flirting with — her, but once she realized he was making eye contact with the empty space ahead, her confusion shifted to disturbance.

To Klaus’s surprise, the ghost pointed at ‘Milk’.

“Hot?” he asked. The waitress rolled her eyes.

The ghost nodded.

“A waffle and a cup of hot milk, please.” Klaus finally turned to the waitress, who scribbled in her notepad and made a hasty retreat.

“So, do ghosts eat or…” Allison asked. “Should we pour him some tea or soda?”

Klaus snorted. “No, they don’t. Some just like looking at foods and drinks and imagining the flavors.” _Like Ben_. “This one though…”

Klaus spent a good five minutes just staring at the ghost and his bizarre, feline ritual of dipping his semi-corporeal fingers into the hot milk and then putting them into his mouth as if he was savoring the milk, which, in reality, just dripped all over the table and the seat (Sweet God, the waitress was so going to murder Klaus!).

“Ah-Uhm… thanks for saving me earlier,” Klaus began.

The ghost stopped whatever he was doing with the milk at once and turned to Klaus. It was part-unsettling, part-exhilarating to have someone’s attention focusing entirely on him, even when that someone was a murder ghost with a gun balancing on his laps.

“Do you intend to follow me—no, no I’ve asked that question already. Are you OK with following me around instead of going into the light, or anywhere for that matter?”

The ghost nodded, then dipped a finger into the milk and wrote on the table.

A single word.

 _Einhärjar_.

Klaus’s eyes widened. The ghost pointed a finger to himself and then to Klaus. “You mean you…” Klaus pointed to the cryptic word. Swedish, he wagered; he wasn’t very familiar with the language. “So you follow me?”

The ghost nodded his affirmation.

When it came to Norse Mythology, Klaus’s knowledge was limited to a Japanese video game he’d been addicted for a while, yet that game was precisely why ‘Einhärjar’ struck a chord with him and he had an almost immediate understanding of what the ghost meant; he just found it a bit hard to believe.

“Oh well,” Klaus sighed, waving a hand absent-mindedly, “your choice. It’s not like I’m tying you to me or anything. You’re very cute, so that’s a plus.”

The ghost stared at him, face blank. Klaus suddenly felt silly for his flirting habit.

“I can’t keep referring to you as ‘ghost this’ or ‘ghost that’ — no offense. How about we picking a name for you? You have anything in mind?”

His reply was a shake of silver-blond head.

“Alright, I’m thinking ‘Dorian’. No, scratch that, you don’t look like a Dorian. How about—” Klaus snapped his fingers, “—Oscar? As in Oscar Wilde. We’re gonna drop the last name, of course.”

In his head Klaus had already complied a comprehensive list of names from several languages, which turned out to be of no use because the ghost nodded on the first pick.

That was… easy. Maybe he hadn’t been very picky in life.

“… And that’s how I got me a brand-new ghost buddy,” Klaus concluded.

“That’s it?” Allison asked, arching her eyebrows incredulously. “You and him just shook on it?”

Klaus shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much that’s it. Unless you wanna to hear about how many times the waitress looked at me and warred with herself whether she should call the police. Oh, and Oscar almost raised his gun at her.”

“OK, I think I’ve reached my innuendo quota for the day,” Allison commented.

Diego made a face at him. “That’s supposed to be funny? You got a psycho ghost. What will he do when you aren’t there to leash him, when you sleep, for example?”

Klaus pffed. “ _Leash_ isn’t a nice word to say to a person, Di. Me and Oscar talked about the ground rules while in the diner, well, mostly me but he listened. Tentatively. We got off on the right foot with me restoring his soul and him saving my ass I guess. Besides it’s nice to have a bodyguard, a Frank to my Rachel, y’know?”

Diego looked like he had several pieces of mind to share but was halted by Allison’s firm hand on his forearm. “Klaus said he got it, and he’s a whole lot better with his powers. We gotta trust him on this.”

“Thank you, Allison.”

He meant it.

…

At the end of a long day, it was always nice to soak in a hot bath and let the scalding water turn his strained muscles to mush. He might have dozed off in the bathtub because when was conscious again, the water had turned lukewarm.

He unplugged the tub and wrapped a huge towel around himself. He almost ditched the towel and just waltzed into his room in his birthday suit, then he remembered his new ghost, who couldn’t be too far from the bathroom door not because he couldn’t physically leave Klaus’s side but because he didn’t want to. Had Klaus not closed the door at his face, the Swede might have followed him into the bathing space and sat down by the tub.

There was a lot to work on if they were to be buddies from now on, with number one being personal time and space.

Sure enough, he found Oscar sitting cross-legged on the bath mat, hugging his gun. Klaus let out a soft sigh.

“I don’t need 24/7 supervision,” he said over his shoulders while making the short journey to his room. “Toilets, bathing, sleeping, jerking off… daily routine, y’ know. When I’m in any of those you can go do your own things. I don’t know what they are but you must have some hobbies, right? Everyone has hobbies.”

Like Ben and his books which Klaus never worked out how he’d acquired. Gifts from his circle of ghost pals, maybe.

Klaus plopped down on his bed, moaning at the instant remedy the downy mattress offered his aching back. He pulled the cover up to his waist and tossed out the towel, which landed haphazardly on a small pile of dirty laundry awaiting his attention. Tomorrow, he promised himself.

Oscar was hovering near the bedside table, looking like he didn’t know what to do with himself and was pretending to examine the various knick-knacks on the table while clearly waiting with abated breath for Klaus’s instruction. Klaus found that both endearing and exasperating.

It was also awkward as hell.

“Just to be clear,” Klaus said to the ghost, “don’t try anything funny when I’m asleep, and by ‘funny’ I mean the pesky little thing called possession. Had it once, hated it. Swear to God if you tried to penetrate me, I’d call off our partnership and call for exorcism.”

Oscar shook his head solemnly and as if that wasn’t enough, Klaus heard an “ _Aldrig_ ” broadcast straight into his mind, together with its meaning. Huh? That was new. Was it due to their spiritual link that made this mind-to-mind communication possible? Klaus’d love to go deeper into it in the morning, when he wasn’t bone-tired and half-unconscious already.

“Pinky swear?”

Oscar didn’t waste a second to hook his pinky with Klaus. Good to know his buddy did have a childish side.

“I’m going to sleep now. Feel free to explore my room. It’s a mess, I know, but surely there’s something to entertain you. Just don’t go spook my siblings, OK?”

Oscar’s eyes scanned the room. Good sign, Klaus mused, adjusting the bedside lamp to the softest glow before shutting his eyes. Seconds later, he felt the mattress near his head dip infinitesimally.

To no one’s surprise, certainly not Klaus’s, he opened his eyes to the sight of Oscar sitting beside him on the bed, his back against the headboard and his arms crossing in front of his chest.

At least he had the grace to leave the gun somewhere Klaus didn’t see, probably having sensed Klaus’s stress when near it.

Klaus decided to make no comment on that.

…

Klaus had had a nice, dreamless sleep.

When he cracked his eyes open, it was slightly past dawn. His head was light, his limbs lax and his body rejuvenated. A good night’s sleep could do wonders, so they said. And his first discovery of the day (he’d made it a habit to learn something new every day — Ben’s advice once upon a time which he’d dismissed until now) was that ghosts could snooze.

Because curling next to him was a cute Swede who was very much dead and very much asleep.

There were worse ways to start the day.

_End_

**Author's Note:**

> The Swedes are my favorite new characters of this season, along with Ray. I felt kind of bummed when the cutest one was the first to die. I had to Google a bit for their names as they were never mentioned in the show. The surviving Swede is Axel, the one killed by Allison is Otto and the youngest one is Oscar (Klaus made a lucky guess in this fic).
> 
> My headcanon for the Swedes is that Oscar was born mute (as he had no line during the entirety of his screen time); Axel and Otto, who could speak, decided to stay silent so that their little brother wouldn’t feel so bad about that. Over time they’d developed super effective non-vocal communication that speech was no longer necessary.
> 
> In this story Klaus opened a small antique shop where he acquired various haunted objects at super-cheap prices (because nobody wanted to keep haunted objects in their house). He convinced and/or forced the spirits haunting the objects to leave and then sold them.
> 
> The Japanese game Klaus’d played is Valkyrie Profile.


End file.
